Announcing Jama Integrations Hub for Hybrid Agile Teams

New release of Integrations Hub includes prescriptive Agile Workflow for VersionOne

Katherine Gray | June 4, 2015

Today we’re excited to announce the latest release of the Jama Integrations Hub, powered by our partner, Tasktop, the provider of best-in-class integrations bus technology. This new release of the Integrations Hub now includes data syncing with VersionOne, allowing teams to track progress within the tool that best supports their work, providing the context and reporting required to keep development on track.

This is a fascinating point in time in product development. Software is at the heart of product innovation, and enterprise companies, faced with increasing time-to-market pressures, are experimenting with development methodologies. According to a recent report* by VDC Research, 31% of embedded engineers say they’re using Agile methodology in their projects, and Jama expects that number to increase. While these practices are helpful in codifying processes and improving communication within teams, things get more complicated in large, distributed groups, separated either by geography or by corporate silos. Even when teams, working on increasingly complex products, are fully committed to a methodology, they have to capture and share information and keep development going forward in the face of constant change.

Over the last year we’ve talked about our research into the behaviors of successful teams and our prescriptive, flexible Agile Workflow that’s designed to keep teams connected across the development cycle. With this new release of the Integrations Hub we’ve expanded options for developers, allowing tracking of active backlog items and sprints in VersionOne while Jama provides cross-functional teams a collaboration forum to capture customer requests, manage changes, track decisions and record approvals on project plans. At any time in the process, business and development team members can collaborate in Jama on key decisions, issues or questions affecting the product and sync relevant data to VersionOne in the form of future backlog item updates, comments, and status updates. VersionOne users can send status updates, questions and comments to Jama to clarify requirements and share progress.

The Integrations Hub is especially important to organizations practicing a hybrid approach to Agile, where development teams work in real-time with stakeholders and formally document requirements to meet regulatory compliance and contractual commitments.

You’ll get actionable recommendations from Forrester for successfully scaling Agile adoption across the enterprise:

Adopt strong Agile practices in the upstream by streamlining the process with the business as well as streamlining the process in the downstream with testing and operations

Replicate what you have done and achieved successfully in isolated teams across the enterprise

You’ll also learn from Jama Software how its Agile Workflow Design facilitates fluid communication without a heavy-handed process to give your engineering teams visibility upstream to the business strategies and requirements defining their sprints, participate in spec definition and review and make better decisions about their tasks.